The Central Bureau of Investigation informed the Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday that 48 prosecution witnesses, including 20 policemen, had turned hostile in the 2007 Dinakaran newspaper office attack case leading to the acquittal of all those who hurled petrol bombs and killed three employees of the newspaper.
When an appeal preferred by the investigating agency in 2010, challenging the acquittal of 17 accused by the Principal District and Sessions Court here in 2009, came up for hearing before a Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and B. Gokuldas, a Special Public Prosecutor for CBI cases charged the accused with “purchasing the victims”.
Expressing his strong objection to the SPP’s accusation, advocate Rupert Barnabas, counsel for one of the accused, said that it was unfair on the part of the prosecution to level such an allegation . “The witnesses were in your custody. If they turned hostile, then you have to blame yourself. You cannot level baseless allegations,” he said.
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Later, the judges granted bail to three accused M. Saravanamuthu, M. Murugan alias ‘Sori’ Murugan and V. Sudhakar since they had engaged lawyers after they were arrested by the CBI following non-bailable arrest warrants issued by the High Court on January 27 for “playing hide and seek” with the court and not cooperating in disposing of the appeal. The warrant issued against one more accused M. Thiruchelvam was recalled since he surrendered before the court and also engaged a lawyer to contest the appeal .
Counsel for one of the accused said Special Public Prosecutor’s allegation was unfair